


Where Innocence Lies

by DawningStar



Category: Baccano!
Genre: AU, Adoption, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 03:45:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2254656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baccano AU:  In the year 1800, Szilard sends his homunculus to hunt Fermet.  She finds Czeslaw Meyer first.  The tangled bonds of loyalty might kill them all.  (Content warning for severe child abuse, torture, and suspension by ropes.  Czes is in the fic; you should all know what to expect already.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Sharn, both for beta-reading and for advice that improved the fic immensely!

Limp and unmoving, the child dangled by his arms in the center of the bedroom. At first glance Ennis judged it probable he was dead. Surprise held her motionless for a few seconds. The corpse of a small boy was not what she had expected to find when she broke into the isolated farmhouse. 

A thick painful gasp broke the stillness as she watched, far too reminiscent of hours Ennis had endured herself in Master Szilard’s training. The thin form twisted against the heavy ropes that held him, straining for breath, his feet kicking far above the ground and gaining no traction. 

Five houses and a warehouse in the area might have belonged to the immortal Master Szilard was presently hunting. Ennis’s task was to investigate them all and report back. Investigating the child who hung imprisoned here was within the scope of her orders. 

The intensity of her desire to do so caught her off guard. What Ennis wanted had never mattered; Master Szilard hadn’t quite forbidden her to want anything, but only, she sometimes suspected, because he believed she ought to be incapable of the feeling. 

She drew a knife from her wrist sheath almost before the decision to do so registered, crossing the dim room in a single step. Her left arm lifted to wrap around the boy’s thrashing legs in support. 

At her touch his eyes snapped open. “Am I done, Fermet?” he panted, voice rising into a high pleading wail that sounded involuntary against the matter-of-fact words. 

For more reasons than one Ennis had no idea how to answer. Much too late to make a difference, she matched the gasping boy to the shy young face of another’s memory. 

Czeslaw Meyer, youngest to board the Advenna Avis. Older than Ennis herself by now. The immortal child was a target. Her master wanted him eliminated. 

Was it the old memories or her own dim flicker of sympathy that drove her to aid him anyway? Ennis only knew that she could not bear to leave him in pain. She stretched upward and sawed her knife across the rope just above the boy’s wrist. 

His full weight was no burden at all. The floor seemed like the best option; even as an immortal, he would not be able to walk for some time. She tried to set him down gently, mindful of the arms that had to have been dislocated. The ropes had cut deep enough into his wrists that there was a small but visible cycle of blood and immortal healing, the skin that pressure continually tore open unable to mend itself. 

It was just as well that she had lowered him to the ground before he blinked clear enough of the pain to squint at her face. Bewildered shock widened his eyes; he flung himself away from her touch with a clumsy roll, still bound at the wrists and less than half his nerves reporting for duty at all if Ennis had any experience in the matter. 

She would have liked to finish cutting him free first, but she did not want to panic him. No point keeping him immobile when he couldn’t even stand up. 

The boy was a low priority compared to Lebreau, she argued in silence against her master's long-standing orders. Czeslaw Meyer was of very little interest either as a threat or as a source of information. Lebreau Fermet Viralesque was the one who had inherited the alchemical knowledge of the Meyer family, the one with opportunity and intelligence and motive to make long-range plans that might interfere with Master Szilard. 

It would be appropriate to report back first before she took any irreversible action. 

Relief stole into Ennis’s mind like a fog; she did not want to harm this child. 

Master Szilard would not be pleased that she had allowed any target to see her. Ennis blinked away the knowledge of punishment to come. She earned that often enough no matter how hard she worked. 

Nothing she could do would prevent her master from attempting to seek out and devour the immortal who had gone with the boy so long ago. Looking at the evidence of Lebreau’s handiwork, Ennis found it remarkably easy to contemplate his death. 

Czeslaw stared at her with a growing frown. “What—what are you doing here?” he demanded in halting dismay, and cringed back against the wall. 

The full explanation would be very awkward indeed. “Helping you. If I can.” Ennis knelt where she was and offered the sharp edge of her knife. At the least maybe she could get him unbound before he realized too much. 

He flinched as though expecting a stab, and scowled at her when she only held the knife still. “I don’t want your help,” he muttered. “You’re going to make everything worse.” Fear flickered stark and hopeless across his face. But after a long pause he did extend a wary hand to hook her knife point under the outer coil of the rope. 

Ennis accepted the gesture, twisting with care to part the rough strands of rope without catching his skin. He examined the swollen wrist and flexed his fingers, winced, and pushed his other wrist in her direction with a skeptical look, bracing for pain. 

One upward cut was enough to loosen the bond. Czeslaw unraveled the rest of the loops with stiff fingers and an occasional quick tug with his teeth, deft enough to make Ennis wonder how much practice the decades with Lebreau had given him. 

Despite the necessary attention to the ropes Czeslaw never took his sharp gaze off her, relaxing a fraction as she sheathed her knife. “Did—did Fermet send you?” he asked. 

“No.” Ennis took careful stock of Czeslaw’s reactions, added their sum to the way she’d found him in the first place, and felt a first strange flutter of something she thought was anger. She did not let it touch her face. Czeslaw didn’t deserve any more fear than she could help. 

Her denial froze him into utter stillness, little to give his thoughts away except for the frantic flick of his eyes. Ennis didn’t think anything she could tell him would help. 

At last he summoned breath to prod a little more. “Who are you?” 

The question hadn’t become any easier to answer. How much of an information leak would her master forgive? If he killed her when she reported back for what she had already done, did it matter? 

Ennis leaned back on her heels, sorting her options. “When is Fermet coming back?” she asked in return. The chances of a useful response were low, but he would never share the information if she waited until he learned any part of who she was. 

“I don’t know.” Quick, defensive, as likely to be true as not considering the circumstances. Lebreau might not have bothered mentioning his plans. The young face tensed in calculation, then lit with an innocence it was a little too late to attempt. “Listen, miss...please don’t tell him the trouble I got myself into.” His voice cracked with an urgency that belied the light expression. “Don’t—don’t tell anyone? It’s a good thing you came when you did, before I got hurt.” He held up now-unmarked wrists as though in evidence, with a shy smile. “Should I know you?” he added. “My name is Czeslaw Meyer—” 

From the abrupt choke as the false smile faded, it wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. His eyes darted to the doorway as though expecting Lebreau to be watching, then back to her with hard accusation. Ennis let out a quiet sigh. The rules of immortality were designed to cause trouble, she suspected. 

No denying it now. “I’m Ennis,” she told him. “We’ve never met.” 

If she left at once, or if she restrained the child with the convenient rope and took him to Master Szilard, she could still survive this. Telling him anything more when her master would inevitably consume his memories was inviting her own death, as slow as Master Szilard chose to make it, every particle of self she thought she had gained absorbed back into his memories to be used or discarded. 

Terror at the thought gripped her chest, despair flooding her again. But there was terror in the child’s eyes too. 

The man she had devoured had hunted down her master in hope of giving this boy some small chance of living in peace. Maybe she owed that to them both. One chance, even if it would inevitably fail. 

Of course, telling Czeslaw the truth would give him more cause for fear. Ennis closed her eyes in preparation, looked up again, and pressed her right hand flat against the floor. “Master Szilard created me to help him hunt all of you down,” she admitted. 

He made a faint squeak, going pale. A definite increase in dread. She held onto the dim hope it would push him the right direction. 

“My master wants Lebreau,” Ennis went on, trying to meet that horrified gaze and having some difficulty holding it. “He might overlook you. If you run. Far, fast, and starting now. He might...be distracted.” By the need to punish, kill, and replace his homunculus, perhaps. 

Czeslaw had begun to pant again, with only fear compressing his lungs this time. “I—I can’t,” he whispered, and shook his head to focus on Ennis with razor-sharp ferocity. “You’re lying—why should you even care?” 

He always chose difficult questions. Ennis was well aware that she should not, with no idea how to explain the fact that she somehow did. “Master Szilard never trained me to lie,” she said, which was true enough. 

Rising panic had pressed his small form back against the wall. “I can’t leave Fermet,” Czeslaw yelped. She wasn’t sure if he’d even heard the poor attempt at reassurance. His arms hugged his chest as though to keep his heart in its place. “I can’t even help him, I’m weak, I’m just a child and I can’t—” He tried to take a deeper breath, bared his teeth at Ennis. “You think so too.” He flung the words at her like a knife, except that she knew what to do with knives. 

“I don’t think that,” she said, and found that it was true. There was no contempt in her heart for Czeslaw. Only a deepening regretful sense that they could have understood one another. Ennis tilted her head. “I can’t run either.” 

Czeslaw blinked at her, startled into silence. 

Ennis pulled a faint weary smile to her lips. “That’s probably why,” she added, in case he still wanted to know. “Good luck, Czeslaw Meyer, whatever you choose.” She rose to her feet and retreated. 

Staying to argue wouldn’t help either of them. Master Szilard would come to find her if she failed to report, and Lebreau could return at any moment. 

For Czeslaw Meyer’s freedom she might not mind death, but her heart rebelled at the thought of giving her life and betraying her master for the sake of the man who had tied those knots and left Czeslaw to die alone.


	2. Chapter 2

The gallop back to her master’s side gave Ennis far too much time to think. She composed and recomposed her report a dozen times, with and without the presence of the immortal child. 

It wasn’t until Master Szilard looked up from his calculations to bark, “Well?” that she realized there was no choice in the matter at all, not any more. The lines of his face and the sharp angles of his beard had always meant terror and obedience to her, the sure knowledge of her pain and death to come. Somehow she found the thought of the immortal child’s death more painful still. 

Nothing twitched in her face. He had trained her far too well for that. 

“I found evidence that Lebreau has recently used the property by the river,” she said in brisk summary. “Alchemical supplies and fresh food are in storage there but he was not. He may return.” 

Ennis had spotted that much in her first sweep of reconnaissance, before also finding an immortal child strung up by his hands in a windowless room. The child could have been anywhere at all when she went to look: hiding in a corner she had missed, out at play, or long gone, either fled or devoured. There was little reason to expect him to be in the house. She hoped with a distant futility that Czeslaw might yet find the courage to leave before it was too late. 

To her deep and unexpressed relief, Master Szilard was too pleased with the news to demand she give all the details. “Load the rifles and my grenades,” he ordered at once, setting down his quill, and let out a low chuckle of satisfaction. “I have many questions Lebreau will answer.” 

The necessary weapons were already in padded crates for safe travel. Immortals tended to be tricky prey, and her master liked to make his own advantages. 

Details of the planned ambush, the relevant outlines of the property, and her master’s further orders all happened in the carriage as Ennis urged the horses to the fastest speed the dusty track allowed. 

As the carriage halted in the small dusty yard, her master stepped from it with a heavy confident tread, as though even the land belonged to him and might need a reminder of the fact. Ennis unloaded the weapons with care and carried them to the shed that seemed to be a makeshift alchemical laboratory, unlocked since she had disarmed the trap at its door. Master Szilard followed to inspect the materials within. 

There was still no sign of Lebreau, the single occupied stall in his small stable empty. According to the plan, in order not to give away the ambush, Ennis drove the carriage and the horses on to a neighboring empty paddock out of sight of the road. 

The expensive well-matched pair had been in her charge since Szilard had purchased them. Ennis brushed her fingers across each silky nose as she set them loose to graze and hoped that her master’s next driver would be competent. 

Running back to the target’s property, she halted in the yard to let her strained muscles recover. Her master greeted her with an absent gesture toward the house, distracted in examining a book of notes. “Set up at that high window. Look for more of these while you’re in there. Lebreau has his experimental records in code, but that won’t be a problem for much longer.” 

A short reprieve. Ennis allowed herself an inner sigh for the child’s sake. 

The case that held the rifles was heavy, but Ennis was accustomed to carrying it. She transferred the padded bag that contained two explosive flasks into the space left by the guns her master had taken for his own use and heaved the whole onto her shoulder, trudging to the front door and up the narrow flight of stairs. 

The window that overlooked the door and the stableyard made a good vantage for the ambush. Ennis examined the dusty glass. Removing one small pane from the corner where the most shadows lay should give her opportunity to fire without changing the appearance noticeably. It didn’t take long to load the rifles. 

Preparations made, she walked back down the stairs. No distant sound of returning hoofbeats yet. She had time to look for other records, and for the child she did not want to find still trapped here in danger. 

Czeslaw Meyer sat huddled in the same back room where she had left him, arms wrapped tight around his knees, staring upward. His fear-glazed eyes flinched anew at the sight of her, though he looked too terrified to cry out. 

If he expected her to drag him out at once and hand him over, he had reason. Ennis found herself puzzled at the amount of effort it took not to express her disappointment at his presence when it was a fact she had already known. If he had run, down the river, across the empty fields, he might have escaped; he couldn’t leave and she didn’t know why that hurt. 

“Master Szilard is outside, but I haven’t told him you are here,” she informed him in a low voice. “He’s here for Lebreau. If you want to survive, don’t draw attention to yourself.” 

His small chin jerked in a convulsive silent nod. 

Hiding would work, at best, until her master absorbed enough of Lebreau’s knowledge to realize where the child ought to be and how impossible it should have been for him to escape without help. After that they were both very dead. But Ennis supposed waiting for Lebreau to return was all the forward planning Czeslaw was capable of right now. 

She swallowed another flicker of rage. If anyone had ever been foolish enough to leave Ennis responsible for a small child, even she would have made very sure the child knew enough to run from danger with some chance at success. 

As long as they were both dying anyway, it seemed a pity to let the food in the kitchen go to waste. Ennis made an attempt to sound less like the threat Czeslaw already knew she was. “You must be hungry. Let me get you something.” 

Silence was the answer, as his forehead wrinkled in mute incomprehension. Ennis thought that was probably the most she was going to get. It wasn’t a no. 

Building a fire was out of the question for obvious reasons. But there was a paper-wrapped small loaf of hard-crusted bread in the pantry, and jars of blackberry jam, molasses, and honey in a cabinet. Ennis cut the bread into slices and carried everything except the bread knife into the small room. 

Czeslaw didn’t say anything, but his eyes fixed on the food with unwilling wary interest as she sat down on the floor. 

By habit Ennis took a piece of crust to test, and spooned a small dab from each of the jars separately onto it. One careful bite of honey, sweet and inoffensive. “Which of these do you like?” she asked Czeslaw. 

He shrugged, tight and defensive, and looked away. 

Fair enough. Ennis spooned more honey onto a soft center slice and balanced it on his knees. From the way she’d found him, she couldn’t even venture a guess how long it might have been since he’d eaten. 

Another five seconds of suspicion aimed at the bread, then Czeslaw gave in and shoved the entire slice in his mouth at once. 

Ennis didn’t object. She’d spent long periods without food too. At least he seemed to be chewing and swallowing at a more sedate pace, probably out of his own experience. She hadn’t planned on taking the food away, but she could understand his reluctance to give her the chance. 

She tested the molasses in the meantime and found it good. Another generous slice for Czeslaw. Sugar was a good quick way to remind the brain it needed to function. 

He hadn’t finished the first gulp yet, but Ennis thought he relaxed a little more when she set the second slice in its place. Her own stomach felt a little better for being fed. 

The blackberry jam was a very good example of its craft, fragrant with a scent of summer. Ennis spread it onto a third slice, leaving more of the crust intact this time in case Czeslaw wanted the different texture. He had only taken one bite of the slice with molasses when she put the next under his nose. The decrease in speed seemed like a step in the right direction. 

Without windows or a lit fire, this small bedroom was dim enough that Ennis hadn’t taken particular note of its contents—except for the child who had required all her attention. When she looked politely away from Czeslaw’s makeshift meal, her gaze rested on one piece of evidence after another that finding him bound and dead had been no great departure from the ordinary. 

The wooden bedposts had been reinforced, with straps dangling prepared. The rack of tools beside the fireplace included more than it should and sharper. More than one metal hook was fastened firmly to the wooden beams overhead. The wooden chair had leather cuffs attached to its legs and armrests. 

In the corner opposite, the padded chair had nothing wrong with it at all except a few worn patches from use over time. Ennis considered the picture of Lebreau sitting there to watch, and felt grateful that she hadn’t chosen to use it herself. 

She felt no desire to investigate what the drawers and cabinets might hold. “Do you want any more bread?” she asked Czeslaw. 

The slice with blackberry jam was more than halfway gone. He paused between bites long enough to cast a wistful glance at the remaining bread, but didn’t answer. 

Enough for now. Ennis folded the rest of the slices back into the bakery paper and closed the jars. “I have to be at my post to watch for Lebreau.” Czeslaw would get in her way, would only be a danger to himself. The target’s frightened dependent shouldn’t be anywhere near her master’s weapons. 

Waiting alone in this dark room to be either punished or devoured...Ennis sighed. The doomed might as well wait together. “You can come upstairs with me, if you will stay out of sight of the window and be careful not to make any loud noises.” At least she would know he was safe. Until the end. “We can take the bread for later.” 

Czeslaw’s eyes were still wide and baffled, but Ennis judged he was some small fraction less panicked. She handed him the jars of honey and jam, and retreated from the room, balancing all three spoons and the molasses on top of the bread. For once in her life she chose not to care at all about cleaning up the crumbs. 

This seemed like the wrong time to insist Czeslaw do anything at all. Ennis half expected that he would stay huddled as far away from her as possible, and wouldn’t have pressed the point. She didn’t look back. 

His soft hesitant tread on the creaking stair behind her came as a pleasant surprise. 

Ennis set the food down in a corner of the upstairs room well away from the window and from the weapons. He ought to be safe there, even if her master came into the house for some reason. 

Not certain what to say, she peered out the window instead. She had kept track of any sounds from outside, and no one had approached yet. The yard spread below empty and innocent, the shed door closed, so her master had no new orders to give her. 

Czeslaw had taken the hint and settled into the corner, but his swift appraisal of her rifles put a dark worry back into his face. She was determined not to feel guilty for wanting Lebreau dead, especially when her master had never given her a choice in the matter. There was nevertheless an inconvenient twinge about making the plan so obvious in front of someone who couldn’t help being attached to the child-tormentor. 

If Master Szilard left the shed, she would hear it, and Ennis didn’t think he was likely to notice voices at that distance. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she told Czeslaw. As reassurance it lacked something. 

His mouth opened for an instant, then he bit his lip nervously. 

Ennis supposed a little paranoia was justifiable. “It’s all right to talk, as long as we don’t raise our voices.” She watched his hands twist into one another, white-knuckled with tension. 

“You said you wanted to help me, but it’s Fermet who deserves help,” Czeslaw blurted, so much in earnest that Ennis felt a little sick. “He’s kind, he takes care of me—he’s all I have.” 

Familiar with having only ever what someone else permitted and commanded that she should, Ennis did not find this appeal effective in quite the way Czeslaw intended. “He took care of you by leaving you to suffocate.” The statement of fact came out soft and bleak and tinted with a fury she had never reached before today. 

Not her anger, she recognized at last, not all of it. The stolen memories of tiny Czeslaw and his devoted caregiver twisted with the betrayal her victim would have felt to realize that the child was not safe. Had never been safe. 

What Master Szilard chose to do with the homunculus he had created himself was his right, whatever else the creation in question happened by accident to feel about it. But Lebreau had isolated and tortured an innocent human child for decades. 

Czeslaw shook his head. “Fermet needs to know these things about our immortality,” he explained. “The experiments are really important, he wouldn’t ask me to do them otherwise.” 

“If they were that important he should have done them on himself.” Her master had never let his own pain stand in the way of careful alchemy. 

The boy flinched, head moving faster in frantic denial. “No, it—it had to be me.” 

Ennis doubted that knowledge of immortality had ever been Lebreau’s true goal. Not when he’d spent decades on a single experimental subject. “Anyone who hurt you like that is worse than Master Szilard,” she snapped. “I am not going to die just so Fermet can go on hurting you.” 

Czeslaw rocked back, mouth open in surprise. He didn’t seem to have an immediate response. 

The strength of her reaction had startled Ennis herself too. She turned back to the window. Duty was simpler, even when she was already failing her orders. 

A few thoughtful minutes later, Czeslaw tried again. “I can tell you don’t like Szilard, so you should help Fermet stop him,” he suggested. “Fermet can explain things better than me. But if he and you stopped Szilard then you wouldn’t have to die.” 

It appeared that Ennis couldn’t maintain emotion for more than a few seconds at a time; she only felt very tired. She couldn’t think of a reason not to give Czeslaw the relevant information when he insisted on trying to make an ally out of his enemy’s tool. Not wanting to tell him wasn’t a reason. 

“I’m a homunculus,” she said, in the direction of the bright sky, and did not turn to look at Czeslaw. “The moment Master Szilard decides not to keep me alive, I am dead. Nothing I can do will harm him.” Her master trained himself to shrug away gunshots, and attempting to eat the source of her own life and immortality would just make him laugh. Before he killed her. “He was careful to make me that way.” 

The child inhaled audibly. “A homunculus? Really?” He sounded more curious than dismissive, which was something. “How did—um. But that’s another reason to help Fermet,” he interrupted his own impulsive question with what presumably seemed more urgent. “You want Szilard to stop hurting people, and Fermet’s not weak like me. He can help you if you give him a chance.” 

If Lebreau had turned out to be in fact anything like the man he had seemed to be on the ship, Ennis might have found a way to attempt that. The proof against him had only grown. Czeslaw’s frightened unquestioning faith was a bitter reminder of how blindly loyal she had been to her master—before devouring a lifetime of memories he did not control. 

She doubted anything less could convince Czeslaw. Even if Ennis knew what to say or what knowledge to share to make him turn against his captor, it would only mean he thrashed harder against the cage. Much the same way she was throwing herself uselessly to her death. 

The knowledge that freedom existed somewhere else was still worth a great deal of pain, at least to Ennis. Did she have any right to force that pain on Czeslaw? 

Releasing a breath, she moved to put the wall at her back, the window beside her. Czeslaw was leaning forward with an unjustifiable hope shining in his eyes. “If any choice I made could help you,” Ennis admitted, “I would accept death for it. You deserve better than being trapped with either Fermet or Master Szilard.” She met his gaze with an intent stare. “But no argument you can make will change my opinion of Fermet.” 

Czeslaw slumped back, expression divided in consecutive waves of disappointment and bewilderment. “Are you sure?” he dared to ask, small and plaintive. 

“Yes.” 

The uncompromising tone appeared to reach him; he heaved a sigh with his entire small body and looked away, eyebrows drawn in a troubled frown. 

Silence rested over them both for an indeterminate span of time, as Ennis made provision for her aim in the changing light of afternoon and Lebreau continued not to appear. If the ambush stretched to another day, keeping Czeslaw out of sight would be more difficult. Not impossible, she had to hope. 

The rest of the bread had vanished slowly, and after a while Ennis noted that his silence was shifting to a drowsy curl, eyes heavy. Moving him to another room had far too many drawbacks, but she rose on silent feet to take a dusty floral cushion off its chair and shake it clean. 

Czeslaw had gone tense again at her movement, but he accepted the cushion, dubious expression notwithstanding. “You’re weird,” he pronounced, and froze next instant to watch for her reaction. 

Although his sample pool might be skewed, Ennis couldn’t say he was wrong. “Wanting to keep you comfortable is not what makes me weird,” she informed him dryly. 

He tucked the cushion under his head, closed his eyes, and didn’t respond. 

Sunlight was slanting red from the west by the time Ennis heard the distant pattern of a single horse on the trail. She touched her rifles and the explosives to check their positions and stood beside the window where the approaching rider would not see her. 

In the corner, she could see Czeslaw not moving, eyelids shut and relaxed. A slow silent step brought her closer to him. 

The horse drew steadily toward the property’s small stable, into the yard below—into hearing range. A jingle of tack as the man dismounted— 

Czeslaw finished drawing a breath and Ennis shoved her forearm into his mouth, dragging him close with an inescapable grasp. She could only afford to be as gentle as he would let her. Teeth closed with desperate tearing force on her wrist, but she didn’t flinch, muffling the boy’s frantic cry of warning. 

“Shh,” she murmured. “Don’t draw attention, remember?” Ennis tugged him around, his back to the window, so that she could catch a slanting glimpse of Fermet. 

The immortal paused for an instant, head up. Whatever faint half-stifled sound he had caught, it made him smile. 

That hardened Ennis’s resolve, if she had needed it. 

Lebreau led his horse into the stable and shut the door. Ennis risked letting her hold loosen a very little. “I am not helping Fermet,” she reminded Czeslaw, quiet steel. 

The boy went limp against her and she allowed him to look up. Tears gleamed in his eyes. “Please...if you won’t help Fermet then do something to help me—there must be something!” His mouth quivered with frantic urgency. 

Something. Perhaps. Ennis winced at the last option she had to offer, the one she’d already dismissed as unfair to the child. “Master Szilard will be distracted when it appears that he’s won,” she said. “If you’re willing—I told you, I can’t hurt him. But if you’re quick enough, if I help you, there’s a chance you could devour Master Szilard and stop him for good.” 

If Fermet did survive this she would be setting up a worse conflict in Czeslaw’s future, but—she was already dead, and she wanted the child to have a chance. Any chance had to be better than none. Fermet might let Czeslaw live long enough to grasp freedom; Master Szilard would devour him at once. 

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Czeslaw confessed into her waistcoat, hands gripping cloth tight. “Eating anyone—like that—” 

Ennis patted his shoulder in awkward comfort, listening with all her might for the sound of the stable door. “I don’t know if I can do this either. Are we going to try?” 

A long shuddering breath. Then a nod. 

“All right.” Ennis met his eyes in steady determination. “This is what we do. After you hear the first gunshot, you run out the front door toward Fermet. I will break the window here to catch you. When Master Szilard is off guard, I’ll give you the best chance I can to put your right hand on his head. Be fast, Czeslaw. You have to think I want to eat fast, or this is for nothing.” 

His hand flexed in her suit. “I can...I can try.” The stark terror in his voice didn’t keep him from letting go of Ennis and stepping back, small face set. 

Ennis mustered a smile for him, all the encouragement she could manage. “You’re brave. Fermet should never have hurt you.” 

He rolled his eyes at this new weirdness and walked with shaky feet toward the stairs. Ennis hoped her master would have no chance to punish this betrayal as he would probably think it deserved. Quick death would be much, much easier. 

It didn’t take very long to unsaddle and brush down a horse. Lebreau stepped into the open yard before Ennis had time to lose her nerve. Closer—on the mark—Ennis flung a bottle of her master’s devising, and it shattered with a great flash. 

She’d shielded her eyes at the moment of impact and picked up her first rifle in the same instant, aim resting on the stunned form. The second rifle followed in practiced speed, two bullets without the time to reload. 

Almost before she had time to note the hit on target, two doors swung open: Master Szilard emerged from the shed to fire his pistol at close range into an already dead immortal form, and the front door of the house thumped as Czeslaw almost fell through it. “Fermet!” his high voice cried, thick with tears.

Ennis dropped her rifle and spun into a sharp kick. The window already weakened by one lost pane shattered, glass piercing her as she fell. Neither the fall nor the glass mattered, only that she had swept Czeslaw up into a tight binding grip before her master bothered to turn on him. 

Master Szilard glanced at him once, no interest in his dark shadowed eyes. “The boy’s still alive? Bring him over here next, Ennis.” He did not wait for her acknowledgement, moving toward Lebreau’s red-spattered body with swift steps. “Look how slow that is,” he added, gesturing in critique of the blood. “Lebreau’s as weak as I expected. It’s time he was put to better use.” 

Ennis squeezed Czeslaw’s right wrist in silent signal, dragging him closer to her master’s broad back. His left hand found her arm and squeezed a response, though he was panting in terror. 

She shifted her grip to lift the small child off the ground, ran the last few steps in the silence Master Szilard had taught her, and threw Czeslaw onto his shoulders as an unlikely but deadly weapon, tiny hands up to cling and to kill. 

Ennis had long practiced to anticipate her master’s reflexes—now she flung herself onto his left arm, dragging it down with her own weight and momentum, to give Czeslaw another instant before her master pulled him off. Master Szilard’s right hand was closed on Lebreau’s head, a target she hoped he could not let go. 

Below her Lebreau was already vanishing. Ennis could not find it in herself to regret any moment of delay. But Czeslaw screamed wordless denial and she couldn’t see him—Master Szilard batted her away with one casual swing of his arm. 

She crumpled all at once, her hands slipping, muscles that should have broken the fall unresponsive. Her shoulder and her head struck the ground with a hard disorienting thump. 

Ennis knew as she landed in limp disarray that her master had seen fit to end her life. That was only what she deserved for acting against her creator. Master Szilard had warned her from the beginning what would happen; she wasn’t surprised to find that he had followed through with the threat. 

Far more surprising was the hoarse disbelieving note in her master’s voice; the note of furious triumph in Czes’s anguished cry; the flux of sunlight as a body twisted in ways flesh and bone were never meant to do, spiraling like dust in a tornado… 

Master Szilard, gone. 

She had never expected her desperate betrayal to work. 

Ennis tried to blink some clarity to her vision or straighten her limbs. Nothing seemed to respond. The world was blurred colors and one motionless shape. 

The small immortal lay curled into himself in the dirt as though anything could defend him from the memories he carried now. A dull stab of guilt pierced Ennis. She ought to have found a better way. 

Neither guilt nor anything else she had fought to feel would matter for very much longer. She couldn’t move, paralysis holding her to her master’s will even after his death. Her heartbeat was a heavy faltering weight in her chest. She tried to draw enough breath to speak, but her lungs refused to expand. A shallow gasp escaped, half-swallowed. “Czeslaw—” 

He was shaking, violent intermittent sobs tearing from his thin frame. His eyes blinked open for an instant, fixed far away in his own mind. 

Ennis did not believe she had any comfort to offer, even if her body had still been willing to obey her commands. No comfort and no peace. But perhaps she did owe him what explanations she could give, if he wanted them. 

She couldn’t even lift an arm to touch his hand. 

The addition of her own stolen lifetime could hardly do any more harm on top of Szilard’s vast collection. Ennis didn’t have enough time to make any of the apologies she owed the child. She had wanted to tell him how much she understood…how grateful she was to be free. No matter how brief the experience. 

Another careful breath. “Mr. Meyer,” she murmured with as much urgency as limited air permitted. 

The moment his distant eyes registered her presence he jerked away, an uncoordinated backward sprawl ending with a hollow thump as his head hit the stable door. Ennis couldn’t help an inward flinch in response and the sky, or her sight, darkened. She tried to swallow and almost choked on the failure. 

“Please.” Ennis couldn’t see him or watch for his reaction, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she would still be capable of speaking. “Before...I die.” Forcing each word out meant waiting for air to return before the next, a series of silent gasps that felt like drowning. “Please...devour me...as well?” 

Silence was the only response as she fought for another breath. “I would...appreciate...being remembered.” By anybody other than Master Szilard. Czeslaw Meyer had obviously had terrible luck in both mortal and immortal lives, but maybe her own sympathy and the murdered life that had first given her that capacity could serve as some small counter to the monster he’d just absorbed at her frantic request. 

“You’re dying,” he repeated in a tone of blank realization. “I—he ordered you to die, and you’re dying.” He let out a bark of humorless laughter, distinctly unchildlike. 

The flood of new memories, Ennis knew too well, was hard to hold and to comprehend. Czeslaw Meyer did not have the strength of ego that her master had always displayed. She hoped he would find a balance of his own. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in case he did not want any further burden, in case this was the last chance to say anything at all. “I wanted...to protect you...better than this.” 

A shadow blotted out the red sunlight. Ennis thought the darkness was only in her eyes until a small trembling hand touched her forehead. She focused on the slowing beat of her heart. This was going to hurt, but she hoped her last thoughts would be calm for his sake. 

“He wanted you to die. But I,” the boy said, the waver in his voice building to an unexpected clear certainty, “I want you to live.” 

Ennis blinked in numb shock as a warm tingling pulse caught her fading blood and swept through every paralyzed muscle, easing her body away from the cold death her master had ordered. She had never known such a reversal was possible, or believed Czeslaw would dredge her master’s memory in an effort to find out. 

He heaved a trembling breath then, uncertainty visible as his weight shifted in preparation to push himself away again. 

Equally uncertain, Ennis reached up to catch his wrist before he drew back. “Thank you,” she said, feeling the depths to which it was inadequate. 

Czeslaw shook his head once, wordless tears glinting against his lashes. He tugged his hand away, and she let her light grasp slip, unwilling to imprison him again. But then another sob shook him; Ennis lifted both arms in hesitant mimicry of what she’d seen parents and siblings do to comfort young children, and he collapsed shuddering against her and began to weep in earnest. 

Warm tears soaked into the lapel of Ennis’s jacket. She realized with a peculiar pang that Szilard would never again care what she looked like or discipline her for failure, as though the foundation of the world had shattered. 

A bad foundation from the start, Ennis reminded herself firmly. This one seemed like a much better beginning.


	3. Chapter 3

Holding Czeslaw through the long spasms of shock and grief and horror, Ennis rocked back and forth gently in stolen instinct. Her shirt was the nearest thing to a handkerchief she could offer. The fallen clothes that had belonged to Lebreau and to her master lay in the dust. She didn’t want to touch them, not while Czeslaw needed her. 

But it was only a minute after he saved her life that, mid-sob, Czeslaw tensed in her arms all at once. “I—I don’t—” He shrank into himself, far more devastated than his first grief. “Why?” 

Ennis didn’t think a good answer to that existed, and didn’t attempt one. The half-coherent plea was the last word he spoke for hours. 

Dusk moved on into true nightfall. The stars came out with an early spring chill, though the day had been warm. Ennis didn’t think the minor cramp in her leg was worth moving for. 

Planning was difficult when her highest priority couldn’t speak. She smoothed Czeslaw’s hair with her chin, watched the stars and the empty horizon, and tried to sort out what he might want next. Or need, if he remained too hurt to say anything. 

Over time the tears faded into dry sobs, and those subsided into an unresponsive blank stillness. Ennis wasn’t sure that Czeslaw wanted to be reminded of any part of the world or his place in it, but lacking specific direction she could only take her best guess. “Czeslaw, it’s getting cold. Do you want to go inside?” 

A long delay and a less than half-hearted shrug. His eyes blinked open, unfocused and empty. 

Letting him stay cold and damp and miserable wouldn’t help anything. Ennis slid her arm around his waist and coaxed him to stand up. 

Inside the house, Czeslaw continued to do what she suggested without any real attention to the tasks. Ennis wrapped a blanket around him while she started a small fire in the kitchen stove. As efficiently as possible, she went outside to draw clean water from the wellhouse, pausing to kick the empty clothes into the shed where they couldn’t trouble anyone. When she returned he’d let the blanket fall, though his fingers felt like ice. 

She put a cup of warm sweetened water in his hands and he drained it without looking. The single bite of a cheese from the outside storehouse made him choke, retching as though his stomach were trying to reject what his mind could not. 

At irregular intervals Czeslaw flinched, but Ennis couldn’t find any pattern in her own actions to explain it. She wished she could battle the memories for him. 

When she asked where his clean clothes were he made a vague gesture that led to Lebreau’s large bedroom. Finding anything to fit the child took more exploration than Ennis wanted. None of it was in that room. 

He accepted the bucket of warm water and the sliver of soap with a little more enthusiasm, scrubbing his hands hard until Ennis asked him to stop. 

After he was clean and dry, Ennis guided him to a pile of blankets and cushions in the kitchen, the stove’s small fire down to dim coals inside the metal grate. No bed in the house was fit for a night’s sleep. If Czeslaw wanted to stay in the house he knew, she hoped he would let her make some sweeping changes. 

Staying where Master Szilard had already found him would bring trouble in the long run, but Ennis wasn’t sure she could make that kind of decision for Czeslaw. 

Ennis had considered going out to bring the carriage and team nearer the house after Czeslaw fell asleep, but sleep did not seem to happen at all. Every time Czeslaw began to relax he bolted upright again within minutes. Sometimes he screamed, but although he leaned into Ennis’s shoulder with some small evidence of relief when he awoke, he didn’t want to talk or explain or do anything at all that she could think to offer. 

Once in the night he woke panting for breath, gripped Ennis’s wrist, and said, “I guess you did understand.” Ennis winced in silent sympathy and shifted the blankets to give him more air. 

At last the sky began to lighten, a dim gray, and the small birds in the eaves began a chirping chorus. Czeslaw looked exhausted, but his wakeful periods were growing longer and Ennis thought he was tired of attempting sleep. She rubbed a thumb over the knuckles of his right hand, which he had clenched tight enough to bleed from the fingernail marks several times in the night until she kept hold of it for his own protection. “We should talk about what we do next.” 

Czeslaw didn’t quite flinch, but the sharp rise in tension wasn’t much better. He wasn’t looking at her, but at least she was fairly certain he was paying attention this time. “You can—” The words caught in his throat. He swallowed and tried again. “You can do what you want. I won’t stop you.” 

Ennis blinked, puzzled, but applied the direction to narrow down her potential plans. “If you’re not too attached to the idea of staying here, I think our best option is to pack up and take the carriage east. Before anyone asks questions.” Her master...her former master...had not made it a habit to bother notifying people before he set out on a new hunt, so they should be well away before any dangerous attention came to rest. “There’s money in the carriage, but we’ll need to bring anything you want from the house too.” 

With a sudden scowl, he pulled his hand free and scooted away from her. “Quit doing that!” 

It was Ennis who flinched at the outburst, dropping her eyes. “Yes, Master Czeslaw,” she said, old habit overriding their short acquaintance. She’d gotten him into this. Asking more respect from her was only right. 

But he responded with a violent shake of his head, tears audible in his voice. “That’s what I mean—Ennis. You should go—I don’t think you’re safe. With me.” He sniffled with a gulp. “I thought you’d want to leave.” 

Had anyone ever worried about her safety before? Ennis doubted it. She met his gaze with a faint smile. “You saved my life. I want to go on helping you, Czeslaw. If you will allow me.” 

She hadn’t been thinking of it as a choice; she was part of Czeslaw now, and taking care of him was more her responsibility than ever. The fact that he didn’t take her obedience for granted felt strange. Finding her unpracticed want and her unquestionable duty focused on the same goal was...nice. Like a bone permitted at last to align straight and heal. 

His tears spilled over and he buried his face in his elbow, blotting them. “Just Czes.” A choked whisper, not a command. 

Ennis accepted it as the best reassurance he felt able to give. “Czes,” she corrected herself, and held out her right hand, low and unthreatening. “Do you want to come get the horses?” 

Czes nodded once, slowly. His grasp on her fingers was as tight as a child clinging to a lifeline in the open sea. It was a start. 

Putting a jacket and boots on him without quite removing that grip took a few contortions, but Ennis didn’t want to take him into the cold unprepared. He slipped back into silence. The distance between them felt a little smaller, even when he stared blankly ahead. 

The crisp pre-dawn air was full of dew, not cold enough to turn the silvery droplets to frost. Their walk down the road was an easy slope and a short distance. Ennis had considered bringing Lebreau’s horse, but Czes seemed capable of walking and she had no idea what memories the innocent animal might prompt. 

The short distance of road they traveled was close to empty, but midway to the turn-off a heavy creak of wheels signaled a farm wagon pulling past from behind them. Ennis guided Czes to the outside edge of the track, arm around his shoulders. 

“Hey! It’s Ennis, isn’t it?” 

She looked up, startled to recognize an elderly farmer who often brought the freshest vegetables to the city market. 

The farmer waved a hand in cheerful greeting. “Who’s that, your kid?” 

That didn’t feel entirely wrong, but it didn’t feel right either. “My—brother,” Ennis said, as the closest approximation to explaining. 

“Yeah, I didn’t think you were that old. You two need a lift?” 

Age was a subject best left unexplored. “No, but thank you for the offer.” Ennis doubted she could get Czes in and out of the wagon without drawing attention to him she would rather avoid. 

He nodded. “Well, good morning to you both, and don’t forget to have a look at my tomatoes this year.” 

It seemed like the wrong time to mention the fact that she would be shopping somewhere far distant within a few days. The wagon moved away as the farmer clucked encouragement to his horses. 

Nothing important. Even so, the encounter had underlined a mortal tendency they were going to have to deal with. When she had traveled with Master Szilard it had always been easy to make herself overlooked as just a servant, but Czes looked much too young for anyone to believe that he would travel with no family, at least not without asking questions. 

Ennis considered the problem as they walked. They did seem to be family in some obscure sense, now that Czes had taken on her creator’s function in allowing her to go on living. As they reached the grassy track where she had left the carriage, she squeezed his hand. “Would you mind being my brother?” 

He looked up, expression absent. “What? No. You can tell people that.” 

“Good.” She tried another tentative smile. It was strange how often he made the expression seem appropriate; Ennis couldn’t remember another occasion when she’d bothered to try. 

She wasn’t sure how useful she could be in the role. Family was important to humans, and her creator had made it clear she didn’t qualify for either. But if Czes wanted a family member instead of a servant or a slave he ought to have one, and his correction to familiar terms made her think he did. She was the only candidate for now. 

Logic didn’t make her any more comfortable with the unknown standard of success in a task that meant more to her than any past assignment. She glanced around to compare their position with her recollection of yesterday. “Just the next field here.” The horses might have wandered to the edges of the fencing, but they knew she would reward them when she called. 

Czes nodded and trudged onward. Offering to carry him would probably be pushing her luck too far. At least he was breathing easily. 

The carriage was back in the shadow of an overgrown willow tree, right where Ennis had left it. “Do you want to sit inside, or up front with me?” she asked, digging one-handed in the compartment under the driver’s seat for her sealed bag of sugar cubes. 

Neither choice held immediate appeal, from the way he clung a little tighter to her hand and looked curiously at the sugar. Ennis extracted an extra lump. “These are for the horses. You can have one if you want it.” 

As often as she had asked the black pair to do peculiar things like stand in a strange field overnight and stay where she put them instead of doing their best to head for a stable, they deserved treats when she could provide them. Sugar was not good in large quantities but it kept better than any fresh food. At the moment she thought it would do Czes more good than harm; an immortal diet could afford to be flexible. 

Czes accepted the sugar, examined the square edges of the chunk, and nibbled the edge. It was more interest than he’d shown for any sort of food since the deaths of the older immortals. 

The two black horses were already approaching with ears pricked up, alert for her return. Ennis patted them both. The geldings were too well mannered to snatch at the sugar, though they were at least as focused on it as Czes was. “This is Dagger,” Ennis introduced the one with a thin line of white on his face, “and the quiet one there is Coal. Would you like to give them their treat, if you’ve finished yours?” 

Despite being far shorter than the horses, Czes didn’t back away from them. He let Ennis place a lump of sugar on top of his flat hand so Dagger could lift it delicately away, then Coal. But his forehead furrowed in confusion. “Those don’t...seem like their names?” 

Ennis understood the problem at once. “Those are nicknames—stable names. They both have registered pedigrees as show horses, but the grooms in the stable don’t need something that long.” Except to order the initial purchases, Master Szilard had rarely paid much attention as long as his horses served his goals. 

Coal sidled closer and worked his ear under Ennis’s free hand. She scratched his forelock obligingly. Czes reached up to put a tentative hand on Dagger’s nose, and turned a wondering gaze on Ennis. “You care about them a lot. I didn’t—Szilard didn’t—” He flinched again, face stricken. 

The reason Ennis had tried so hard to keep the horses healthy and eager to obey was so that they would satisfy her creator as long as possible. They were not by any means the first animals she had driven for Szilard, nor would he have approved of attachment on her part. 

It shouldn’t be Czes’s job to cope with those memories. 

“I think they will be better off with you,” she said, nudging his arm to remind him where he was. “If they understood a little more, they would be as grateful as I am. Come on. Let’s get them in harness, and I can show you how to drive them on the way back.” 

Czes cast a vastly doubtful look at the horses and his small hands, but as a distraction the idea seemed to work. Coal and Dagger were rested enough from their day in the field that they were eager to take their accustomed places and didn’t protest the bits. 

Explaining each step of the process kept Czes involved. Whatever he’d picked up from the collection of lives he had absorbed, it wasn’t the same as personal experience. Ennis knew that all too well from her attempts to make use of the knowledge her master had given her. She wanted him to drive with skill, not as a half-remembered contradictory theory that gave him no confidence in himself. 

That would take a while. But she boosted Czes up beside her and explained what signals Coal and Dagger in particular would respond to. “It isn’t a question of strength. You can’t force them to do anything, and I doubt I could either. We just tell them what we need in a way they understand.” 

The carriage and team weren’t moving when she handed the reins over to Czes, but his eyes were enormous. His soft command only sent the pair into a few steps at a sedate walk before they paused again in confusion. “Very well done,” Ennis praised them all anyway, taking the reins back from his clenched hands. 

Czes tilted a shy smile up at her, relaxing a little. “I like them.” 

“There will be plenty of chances to spend time with the horses, if you want to practice.” There was a long journey ahead of them all, and besides that Ennis doubted she and Czes would ever make the kind of income that meant paying a stable full of grooms was a cheap convenience. The emergency supply of money in the carriage was useful, but it would only stretch so far. 

He made a soft sound, half approval, half worry, and leaned into Ennis when she extended as much of an arm as she could spare from driving. 

Though he lapsed back into silence on the ride to the house, it felt to Ennis more like the quiet of his own worry and less the overwhelmed stillness of a mind flooded by foreign memories. She didn’t try to break it, and he didn’t show any particular distress. 

When the house came into view he went tense against her side. More evidence that leaving was the right choice. Ennis drew the horses to a stand in the yard. “Czes, is there anything you want to get from inside?” 

He gave a small mute shake of his head, barely visible, eyes distant again. Ennis watched in concern. 

Some level of distraction might do him good. Ennis put the slack ends of the reins in his hands again. “Dagger and Coal know I want them to stand still, but you stay with them so they aren’t lonely. All right?” 

The nod was almost nonexistent, but his fingers folded tight around the leather. Ennis whispered quiet commands to the horses and hurried inside. 

Most of the items Ennis considered useful had already ended up in the kitchen in her candlelight search of the house last night. The food, the blankets, and the least damaged of the clothes sized for Czes made an easy few trips. The rifles and remaining grenades could not be left to draw attention and had to travel with them. She abandoned most of Lebreau’s cookware on pure suspicion, but a generic cast-iron pot and tin ladle made it to the cargo hold on the principle that she needed to heat water somehow and any replacement would look exactly the same. Some grain from the stable replenished her own travel store for the horses. A lamp, a few candles, and supplies for starting fires had to come too. 

One innocuous red blanket startled a faint catch of breath from Czes when she brought it into the sunlight. Ennis removed it from the pile at once and tossed it into the open door of the alchemy workshop instead. 

Lebreau had a number of coded journals, which Ennis had located earlier on her master’s orders. Now she thought it would be best to make sure no one ever uncoded them. Czes could remember anything he needed to without making him look at Lebreau’s handwriting as well as his mind. 

Whether the notes concerned alchemy or something worse, Ennis didn’t want to leave behind clues to the existence of immortals. She piled the journals in the shed and took a quick inventory of the alchemical components she had to work with. If Czes wanted none of them, it was safer to destroy them all than risk any curious innocent splashing distillates around. 

But before taking any drastic steps she hurried to the stable. Lebreau’s horse was a bright-eyed chestnut mare, not visibly mistreated. Ennis snapped a lead rope to her bridle and coaxed her out. 

Czes was still holding the driving reins, but his posture was stiff misery. He didn’t look at the horse. 

“We could sell her in the next town,” Ennis said gently, “but we don’t need the money. Do you want to keep her?” 

After a wary pause, he shook his head, eyes fixed down. 

“That’s fine, Czes. I understand.” Whether the animal herself featured in any painful memories was beside the point when she had to be strongly associated with Lebreau in Czes’s mind. Ennis gestured to the small workshop in the shed. “Are there any books or supplies you want to keep? It would be safer to destroy that kind of evidence, unless it goes with us.” 

A spark of surprise brought his gaze up to meet hers for one instant of vengeful hope. “Do that,” he said, voice small and strained and not in the least unsure. 

Ennis returned a grim nod. “I’ll set the mare loose in the far pasture, then, where she’ll be safe until someone finds her.” The water supply there looked sufficient, a small stream that trickled down to join the river. It wouldn’t take long before smoke brought investigators. Ennis hoped the horse’s next owner would be kinder and more deserving than Lebreau. 

She led the horse away and turned their own team farther toward the road before she began the tricky business in earnest. Catching herself on fire would only be a minor inconvenience, whereas spooking or injuring the horses was an unacceptable risk. 

For the benefit of mortal investigators, she singed a few patches of grass in a trail toward the river. With luck they would assume Lebreau had run in desperation to the largest nearby source of water, an easier explanation for his body’s total disappearance than the truth. 

It would be best if they took the fire in the shed as an accident, and to that end Ennis arranged the books open on the desk by her chosen firestarters rather than soaking them all with alcohol. Anyone would be able to see that Lebreau had been playing with strange flammable things. A spill or two...and perhaps a little too much to drink… 

Ennis opened one of the more volatile components she recognized just a crack and exited the shed in haste before escaping vapor found the tiny unshielded candle flame in the opposite corner. 

She leaped up to the box seat and took back the reins, clucking the horses forward. Czes turned around the moment the leather left his grasp, staring at the shed. Ennis chose not to stop him. If he thought the sight was worth the risk of debris, he was probably correct. 

A muffled explosive thump and the high-pitched shattering of glass came as a distinct satisfaction. Ennis murmured soothing phrases to Dagger and Coal as the team tossed their heads. She let the horses obey their instinct of trotting quickly away from the noise and smell. They had to make some distance now to let everyone assume they had never been here at all. 

Beside her Czes clung to the back of the seat, still watching the fire. He didn’t move until trees closed in around them and the faint trail of smoke was lost against the sky. Then he inhaled a slow deep breath and turned to the front again. 

For the next few miles he held himself stiffly balanced a few inches away on the seat, despite Ennis’s offered arm at uneven stretches of road. She observed the heavy droop of his eyelids with concern. “You could rest inside the carriage without being afraid of falling off.” If he wanted space to think, better that it not put his safety at risk. 

He shook his head at first. As the carriage moved onward he shook it several more times; the tired slump in his shoulders grew steadily more pronounced, a battle against his stubborn will to stay awake. 

As they approached an ill-maintained stretch and Czes drooped farther, Ennis put her right arm around him in a loose protective circle. For a few tired bumpy minutes he rested against her, then blinked himself conscious again by force and sat up on the edge of the seat instead. “I guess the carriage,” he gave in at last. 

Ennis slowed the horses and helped him climb into the enclosed center with its springs and long padded seat. She opened the windows and showed him how to shut them again if the dust or noise got too heavy. With all the reasons Czes had to be tired, she dared to hope he might manage a dreamless hour or two now that the house was behind them for good. 

Her glances backward, when the road allowed them, were reassuring at first. Czes lay horizontally on the bench seat with a light quilt pulled over him. His mouth hung slack with sleep, and he looked more peaceful than she had yet seen. 

Making broad outlines for what Czes might want to do or see in the future and the things she would need to be certain of doing to keep him safe, Ennis considered the peaceful silence a good thing. She let the interval between checks slip from seconds to minutes as he continued to sleep. 

It didn’t seem strange that he would tug the quilt up over his head. But when, two checks later, she caught a glimpse of his face dead white and streaked with silent tears, she almost fumbled the reins in her hurry to get the carriage off the road and go to Czes. 

He jerked away from the door when she opened it. The quilt landed in a tangle around his feet. Ennis half-reached for him, reconsidered, and climbed up to sit on the edge of the cushioned bench instead. “Can I help?” she asked softly. The fact of the nightmare didn’t need confirmation. 

Czes stared at her with a deep lingering horror in his face. His throat moved in a convulsive gulp, but he didn’t speak. 

Comforting children had never been on Szilard’s long list of tasks at which he expected his homunculus to excel. At the moment Ennis wished it were. She offered her left hand, palm up. 

From the blank terrified look in Czes’s eyes, she wasn’t sure whether he was seeing her at all. “I don’t want to cut my heart open again,” he said, slurred and miserable. “That isn’t fun—it isn’t—” His hands clutched at his own chest in feeble defense. 

“We won’t do anything like that,” Ennis promised with a twinge of vivid sympathetic pain. 

Czes blinked twice, a little of the fog shifting but the horror unchanged. “I wanted—he wanted to do it again—he said we had to but he wanted to, he always just wanted to watch me scream—” He dragged in a gasp of air. “I thought he cared!” Betrayal and self-disgust tinged the sobbing wail: “He liked my screams better the more I trusted him!” 

Every new thing she learned about Lebreau left a worse taste. “It doesn’t sound like he gave you any chance to question him.” Less even than her creator had allowed her, if by accident. “That isn’t your fault, Czes.” 

Shame and suspicion fought their way across his expression as he came farther awake. All at once he scowled at her. “Why are—” Czes stopped, swallowed, moistened his lips. “You haven’t said anything about how wrong I was, what a stupid child I sounded like, not after—not since.” 

Ennis twitched one shoulder in an uneasy shrug. “When I realized you would inherit his memories, I wanted you to be right about him. At least a little.” Lebreau’s actions were utterly inexcusable, but if his madness had any justification in his own mind, she wouldn’t have tried to take that comfort from the child who had clung to his name. 

His snort was bitter, sounding far too old even for an immortal. “The fact that I can kill you now doesn’t have anything to do with it.” 

“If I were afraid of you the way I was afraid of Master Szilard,” she said in stern tones, “I would have taken your offer to let me leave.” If Fermet had won instead she would have been grateful to go. She did not think Fermet would have made the offer. 

The sigh Czes blew out didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Where are you taking me?” 

That seemed like an abrupt subject change, but Ennis felt relieved he was showing a little interest in the future. “Getting out of the area is the most important priority right now,” she began a quick report. “If you are interested in any major expense, like traveling out of the country or building a house to your own taste, we will need sources of income first. We could try to call on Master Szilard’s resources elsewhere if any of them appeal to you, but I think that renting a small place in a city or town would be safer.” 

He lifted his eyebrows in wary surprise while she spoke as though something did not match what he expected, but after a long moment’s pause he agreed, “Nothing Szilard set up.” 

“Is that acceptable?” Ennis couldn’t quite shake the sense that she was far overstepping her boundaries, despite the fact that she’d helped kill her master and not much of her training applied here. “If you have a different goal, we can plan for it.” 

“Acceptable,” Czes muttered. It might have been repetition or grudging confirmation, she couldn’t tell. “But, Ennis—what do you want? From me?” There was an aching plaintive note to the question. 

Ennis wasn’t accustomed to noticing her own wants, much less giving them voice. This demanded no less than complete honesty. She hesitated, shaping and discarding words. “I want…” She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead for an instant, remembering his choice. 

Words for her desire were not so hard to find after all. “I want to see you happy,” she said slowly, “in years to come. I want to know that the price of my freedom hasn’t crushed you, Czes.” 

The tears that gleamed in his eyes overflowed when his face crumpled. “I don’t want to be like him.” Czes sniffled. “Either of them.” 

“You’re not.” Ennis held out her left hand again. “You know better.” 

Tense battle waged in his face. After a hard-fought pause, he leaned forward, bypassed her hand altogether, and lurched into her startled arms. “Okay,” he whispered. 

Ennis let him hold on until he calmed. There was a peculiar comfort in his small warmth, an anchor for a world she had torn adrift. “Let’s find a place where we can stop for lunch,” she suggested when he drew back to dry his tears. “We have a long way to go.”


	4. Epilogue

After lunch, and for much of the rest of the trip, Czes didn’t protest leaning against Ennis when he grew tired as she drove. If drowsing shifted to uneasy tension she called his name to wake him. It seemed to help. 

They slept in the carriage for several cold windy nights. Ennis curled against the back of the seat and put a cushion in her lap for Czes’s head. The nightmares continued, but if she shook him awake when they began he showed less confusion of who he remembered being. 

Once, trapped with few distractions in the dark and struggling not to fall back into memory, Czes begged her to talk about anything that didn’t include Szilard. Her options were limited. Ennis choked down her own guilt and shared in soft tones a few images of a childhood and an adventurous sea-faring life that should never have belonged to her at all. Those memories meant immeasurably more to Ennis than anything she had ever expected to see or do in her own life. Until now. 

If the stories were a comfort to Czes, she thought the man she had murdered might have almost approved. 

Czes listened without interruption. A long moment of silence stretched out after her inadequate words faltered. “Was it him who made you want to save me?” His right hand clenched on a blanket in fretful unease, a rustle in the dim carriage. 

“Without him I would never have known I had a choice,” she admitted. The moment of that murder replayed in her eyes and made her own hand burn. “Even with his memories I couldn’t find a good one.” Ennis had done her best to help Czes and it had ended with hundreds more years of compiled horror added to his mind. She’d held him through his nightmares...he might have found death easier. 

She tried to take comfort in the fact that if Czes found her failure inexcusable, she would already be dead. 

His quiet sigh didn’t sound angry. “I didn’t have any good ideas either. That’s obvious now.” 

Ennis wasn’t sure what to say to this. She squeezed his hand gently instead, and when the silence threatened to drag Czes away she made a valiant attempt to interest him in the important question of what the next day’s meals should be. 

Several weeks of travel at a pace slow enough not to harm the horses brought them far enough away from Szilard’s last known location and the fire that Ennis considered it safe to risk finding a home. She hoped it would last them until Czes was well enough to make plans of his own. 

It had taken her almost the entire time to convince him to have any opinion on what sort of house or property they should look for. Czes seemed inclined to leave everything up to Ennis, and her own instinct to look to him for orders baffled him more often than not. 

A few broad descriptions of things he might like or not like to see in their temporary refuge gave Ennis enough to work with. She chose an empty house and small barn out at the edge of a town well off the main highways. The owner of the property seemed sympathetic to her brief statement that she and her brother were coming back East after the death of their parents, and offered a good rent on the house for a year’s time. 

Once they had a safe place to unpack, Ennis took Czes along to drive the carriage into the city and sell it. He helped her choose a cheap and less eye-catching cart and sighed in relief at the trade. 

Ennis herself was enough of a reminder of her former master without keeping too many others around. 

The first year was full of misunderstandings. Czes and Ennis both tended to flinch every time the other did anything that might be taken as a sign of anger or unhappiness. Czes’s temper fluctuated with his uneasy control over the memories he’d never wanted, and Ennis was not at all accustomed to allowing her face to show any emotion. Awkward apologies and time spent brushing the horses to give each other space usually got them through. Coal and Dagger shone with the attention. 

The nightmares didn’t get any better, but as Czes found things to distract him they did seem to allow him a little time to sleep before they took over. Ennis grew accustomed to napping while he read, and reading by candlelight while he slept to be alert for the first restless sound. 

Books were a vast new thing that year. Ennis had never been permitted to read and Czes had had very little opportunity for it. Their trip to sell the carriage had also been the occasion when she had asked if he wanted to buy any of the books or newspapers, he had asked if she wanted to read some of them, and they had tried not to exchange sympathetic looks—then both plunged into the purchases with no one to hold them back. 

Once Czes began to push for time by himself, Ennis found various odd jobs around town. She told herself it was to keep their money ready for emergencies, but in fact she wanted money mostly in order to permit the purchase of more books. 

As Szilard's servant no one had noticed or cared about her gender, or so it had seemed to Ennis. Now for the first time she sometimes wore dresses to blend in. Czes grinned at her frozen bewilderment every time a man offered to carry her books, and she didn’t mind his teasing if it gave him cause for laughter. 

They stayed in that house two years before a few concerned comments about her little brother’s slow growth rate meant it was time to find another. By then Ennis had grown more confident of her place with Czes and her freedom, and Czes was at least practiced enough to fight off the memories without losing a thread of conversation most of the time. 

The cart was heavy with books when they left, even after selling and giving away quite a few. 

For more than a decade longer they moved from one town to another within the distance their horses could cover in a few weeks. Coal and Dagger died peacefully within a year of one another. Ennis had never permitted herself to grieve anyone as she mourned the loss of the mortal animals. She and Czes wept together without shame. 

Neither of them wanted to purchase any other horse after that. Within a few more years they bought passage west instead, for the sake of distance from Szilard’s remaining network as well as the open space and unfamiliar sights, traveling light except for the books that stayed in their packs. Ennis and Czes were in no hurry. By their third decade together they knew one another well enough to accept the hardships of the journey without fear over how the other might react. 

It was Czes who asked, as they reached the coast, whether Ennis wanted to go on traveling west. Once he had raised the possibility the lands she shouldn’t remember had a strong pull on her mind. 

The fact that Ennis lacked a last name hadn’t mattered much in their travels, since most people assumed as siblings they shared the same one. Moving between separate countries was likely to be more complicated. The evening after meeting a fur trader and giving yet another careful order of introductions, she sighed quietly to Czes, “If anyone ever asks me to write my full name, we had better say I can’t. It would be easier than trying to explain I don’t have one.” 

Czes blinked at her in surprise and cast a skeptical glance at the books and writing paper she had refused to give up even on the hardest trails. “Maybe. But I didn’t realize…” His gaze went distant for a moment. “He didn’t permit you to use his. That’s typical.” 

Although Ennis wouldn’t have wanted to take her creator’s name even as a last choice, she sometimes wished he’d made hers just a little longer. She would have felt some fraction closer to human. That was probably why he hadn’t let her. 

Her idle suggestion had pushed Czes into the maze of memories again. Ennis pulled a carefully-hoarded sweet out of her supplies and tossed it at him to spur more pleasant thoughts. “If it’s ever a problem, we can figure something out,” she dismissed the matter. 

The hard sugar vanished at once into his cheek. Czes smiled, only a little lopsided. “What you ought to do is listen for a name you really like, and then let the guy marry you long enough to keep it,” he advised. 

Ennis prodded his foot hard for that. “If I ever do get married you’ll only have yourself to blame for putting it into my head over and over.” 

He shrugged one shoulder, still twinkling his peculiar blend of innocent mischief. “You’re not a terrible judge of character. I could live with that.” 

A good-humored snort and a wrinkled nose were the only proper responses. “I’m busy enough trying to keep my little brother out of trouble,” Ennis pointed out. But she leaned back on her hands, turning the idea over in her mind. Letting herself grow too deeply attached to any of the short-lived mortals had so much potential for pain. “If I did need a name, adoption might be less complicated than marriage,” she mused. “No reason it shouldn’t work.” 

The sudden stillness that followed startled Ennis; even the candy in Czes’s mouth had gone motionless and pensive as he watched the campfire. She hadn’t meant to imply anything in particular. With no more than moderate difficulty, she fought back the need to apologize and waited for Czes to finish thinking instead. It didn’t look like the thoughts were choking him. 

“If you like my family name,” he began after a time, words slow and measured, “we could find out whether that does work for the rules.” Czes looked up at her for an instant, then farther up at the stars. “It doesn’t have to be...real, if you don’t want that.” 

Ennis had to consider this a moment herself. “I don’t consider our family any less real than anything else about me,” she told him. More real in most cases. “But—making it formal. I do want that. Very much.” 

He smiled, odd and shy, and pulled his pack close to get the battered quill and ink out. 

The contract was less than half a page, which was all the room Ennis had left to cut from the letter she’d been composing to a pro-abolition journal. Czes wrote with a legal formality that Ennis recognized. She considered this endeavor a much better use for the training. 

Czes signed it with a flourish in his role of head of the Meyer household and held out quill and paper. A twinge of trepidation preyed on Ennis, but not because she had the slightest doubt about her small older brother. 

The quill moved in her hand. This was her name, the name she could never lie about on paper or in the presence of another immortal. 

Ennis Meyer, she read at the bottom of the short contract. 

She tried not to wrinkle the paper too much when she swept Czes into a sudden enfolding hug, clinging hard. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

Czes’s eyes were bright in the firelight when she finally let go. “Thank you, Ennis.” The note of sincerity rang deep. 

Whatever complications the future might hold for them both, Ennis liked the certainty that they would face it together. A true family. 

(end)


End file.
